Top 20 Small Companies in America

Our list of 100 Best Small Companies in America features outfits with remarkable sales and earnings growth. Candidates must have been publicly traded for at least a year, generate annual revenue between $5 million and $1 billion and boast a stock price no lower than $5 a share. (For apples-to-apples comparisons we excluded financial institutions, REITs, utilities and limited partnerships.) The rankings are based on earnings growth, sales growth and return on equity in the past 12 months and over 5 years; we dropped thinly traded names and those with fuzzy accounting or major legal troubles. We also factored in stock performance versus each ­company’s peer group. Shares of last year’s members outpaced the Russell 2000 small-company index by an average of 10 percentage points. Here are the top 20.